


in your head, they're still fighting

by aghramochroi



Category: Ratched (TV)
Genre: Discussions of War, F/F, Gwendolyn Briggs: Patron Saint of Patient Lesbians, Hurt/Comfort, Mentions of Chemotherapy, Panic Attacks, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, a teeney tiny bit of angst, it got really fluffy at the end oh lord, they call it shock though
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-04
Updated: 2021-02-04
Packaged: 2021-03-12 05:13:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,410
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28880028
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aghramochroi/pseuds/aghramochroi
Summary: Gwendolyn does not know much about war, but she does know this: war is not easy, it's messy, it leaves scars that are not always visible. She hadn't thought about how these invisible scars might have affected Mildred. She realises, now, that the fighting doesn't always stop in your head.When Mildred's PTSD sparks a panic attack, Gwendolyn helps her through it and finds out about her time as a nurse in the war.
Relationships: Gwendolyn Briggs/Mildred Ratched
Comments: 12
Kudos: 49





	in your head, they're still fighting

**Author's Note:**

> hello hello i'm back with more of my favourite lesbians - i hope you enjoy!
> 
> title is from Zombie by The Cranberries
> 
> warning for discussions of war/PTSD/panic attacks, and a mention of chemotherapy

_“with their tanks, and their bombs,  
and their bombs, and their guns,  
in your head, in your head,  
they are fighting.”_

“Here, pass me your cup and I’ll wash it with the rest of the dishes.”

Gwendolyn rose from the table as she drained the last of the tea and passed her cup to Mildred, who was standing at the sink with her hand outstretched. Moving to the sitting room, she left the dishes to Mildred and picked up her book. Usually, Gwendolyn would be at her side on drying duty, but she had come home from chemotherapy that morning more tired than usual, and Mildred had insisted that she spend the rest of the day resting.

Shifting slightly, she shoved a pillow behind her back for support. However, before she had a chance to even open her book, she heard a smash from the kitchen. Looking over to the kitchen sharply, Gwendolyn lifted herself off the couch quickly at the sound of what seemed like muffled cries. Rushing out to the kitchen, she came to an abrupt stop just inside the kitchen door at the sight in front of her.

Mildred was on her knees on the floor, shaking violently with her hands clamped over her ears. Every now and then, she let out a strained whimper. At the sight of blood trickling down one of the arms Mildred had raised to her head, Gwendolyn unfroze and ran to Mildred’s side.

“Mildred, darling, what’s wrong? What happened?”

When Mildred stayed silent other than the occasional sob, Gwendolyn looked around the kitchen helplessly to try to figure out what had made Mildred so upset. Remembering the smash she heard, she strained her neck to look in the sink and saw the cup she had given Mildred to wash, shattered into several pieces. Surveying the scene in front of her, she decided to start with damage control. She stood up and turned off the tap, leaving the shards of ceramic in the sink for the time being. Then, Gwendolyn knelt beside Mildred, close but making sure not to touch her.

“Mildred,” she began softly. She didn’t know where the other woman was in her mind, but Gwendolyn’s first priority was to bring her back to reality. “Mildred, it’s Gwendolyn,” she continued. “Listen to my voice, dear, just focus on me. I’m right here beside you, everything’s okay. You’re here with me.”

She carried on speaking softly for another few minutes until Mildred’s shaking calmed to a tremble and she slowly lowered her hands from her ears. Taking that as her cue, Gwendolyn reached out and wrapped Mildred’s hands in her own. The other woman inhaled sharply at the contact, prompting Gwendolyn to look down and discover the source of the blood she had seen – a small cut on the inside of Mildred’s hand, most likely from one of the shards in the sink. Gwendolyn moved her hands to around Mildred’s shoulders, carefully pulling her close and holding her as she stroked her hair. Mildred gradually calmed as Gwendolyn held her, whispering calming remarks into her ear the whole time.

Just as Gwendolyn’s knees were starting to go numb from sitting on the floor, Mildred pulled away and dragged a hand across her face to wipe her tears. “I’m sorry,” she whispered hoarsely. “I broke your cup.”

Gwendolyn ran a hand through Mildred’s hair again, smiling when she closed her eyes at the sensation. “Oh, darling, I don’t care about the cup. What happened?”

Mildred shook her head slightly and Gwendolyn chose not to push her just yet. “Let’s get you up and I’ll sort out your hand, okay? Does it hurt?”

Mildred shook her head. “Not really.” Seemingly satisfied with that answer, Gwendolyn took her uninjured hand and gently hoisted Mildred off the floor and sat her at the kitchen table.

Mildred watched through puffy eyes at the woman moving around the kitchen, grabbing some tissues and the first aid kit, filling the kettle as she passed it and putting it to boil. Dropping into the chair beside Mildred, Gwendolyn opened the kit and took out some anti-bacterial solution, wipes, and a plaster – one of the perks of living with a nurse was that their first aid kit was always stocked for any minor medical emergency. She looked up at Mildred, who was working on evening out her breathing. “Are you doing your counting?”

Mildred nodded wordlessly; Gwendolyn had taught her various breathing exercises following the first panic attack she’d had in the woman’s company.

“Good.” Gwendolyn took a wipe and gently cleaned the blood away before putting some anti-bacterial solution on a tissue. “This is going to sting,” she warned. She saw Mildred take a deep breath, which she released noisily when the tissue touched her open wound. Gwendolyn gently cleaned it as quickly as she could. Finally, she covered it with a plaster and lifted the hand to kiss it softly, revelling in the smile that got from Mildred.

The kettle started whistling loudly and Mildred winced at the high pitched noise. Gwendolyn quickly rose and lifted it off the stove. Grabbing two teabags, she proceeded to make the tea the way each of them liked – Mildred’s with two sugars and plenty of milk, her own with no milk or sugar but, to Mildred’s constant horror, leaving the teabag in. Moving back to the table, she sat the mugs down and Mildred immediately sought the warmth as she wrapped her hands around hers. They both stayed silent for a few minutes as they sipped their tea. Once she felt Mildred had calmed down fully, or as fully calm as Mildred ever got, Gwendolyn spoke again.

“What happened when the cup broke?”

Mildred fiddled with the cup in front of her. She ran her finger around the rim of the cup several times before she spoke. “I- it-“ she frowned as she tried to gather her thoughts. Gwendolyn waited patiently. “My hands were wet and soapy, and when I was rinsing the cup, it slipped and broke. It- it shattered and the noise…” she drifted off again. “Some part of my brain thought… I’m not sure what my brain thought, but it brought me back to the war. I was in the medical tent, and there was gunfire and yelling and-“ she took a deep breath.

Gwendolyn laid her hand atop on Mildred’s. The nurse gave a weak shrug. “That’s it, really. For some reason, I heard the sound of the cup breaking as noise from… _back then._ ”

Gwendolyn tightened her grip on Mildred’s hand. She felt the warmth building behind her eyes but refused to let the tears fall. She and Mildred had never really discussed Mildred’s time in the war, other than what she had done to relieve the suffering of some of the soldiers. She sometimes mentioned it in passing – a fellow nurse she had met overseas, or something she had read at the time when she had a rare free moment – but she had never put much thought into how living in a literal warzone would have affected her partner, something she was beginning to feel very guilty about. Of course it affected her- she was human, and despite how supressed her emotions tended to be, she did still feel them.

Gwendolyn figured now was as good a time as any to start. “Do you want to talk about the war?” she asked softly. The last thing she wanted to do was push Mildred into talking when she didn’t want to or wasn’t ready; she knew first-hand how withdrawn the woman could get when she was faced with a memory she didn’t like.

Mildred was silent for a moment before she made hesitant eye contact with Gwendolyn. “What do you want to know?”

Gwendolyn tried not to let her surprise show on her face. She had definitely expected to be shut down. “Anything you want to tell me.” When Mildred shrugged in response, Gwendolyn bit the bullet and picked a question.

“Have you any good memories about it?”

If Mildred was surprised by the choice of question, she didn’t look it. Instead, she looked thoughtful for a moment and her brow furrowed slightly. Soon, a small smile appeared on her face.

“There was a soldier,” she began. “Jack. He was only young, 20, from Pennsylvania. Scranton, I think.” Her smile grew slightly as she spoke of the man. “He taught me how to play poker.”

Gwendolyn breathed a laugh at the image. “He had been hit with shrapnel in an explosion,” Mildred continued. “It lodged in his back. He was very nearly paralysed, he had to basically relearn how to walk. While he was in my medical tent, he used to be very restless – he was so young; all he ever wanted to do was move around. One of the other nurses had given him a pack of cards, and he would convince me to play with him if things were quiet during the night. I did a lot of nightshifts and he couldn’t sleep most nights.” She frowned. “He used to have a lot of nightmares. Anyways, he taught me how to play poker and we would bet cigarettes in place of money.”

“He sounds like a lovely boy,” Gwendolyn remarked.

Mildred nodded. “He was. Still is, I hope. The last time I saw him was the night before he went home – once he was healed enough to leave, they gave him an honourable discharge because he couldn’t fight anymore due to his back.”

Gwendolyn regarded her for a moment. “Maybe you could get in contact with him some day.”

“Maybe I could.”

They fell silent once more until Mildred spoke again. “I’ve never told anyone about Jack before,” she breathed.

“I’m glad you told me,” came Gwendolyn’s sincere reply. “I’m glad you told me about any of it.”

Mildred’s fingers started tracing the rim of her long forgotten cup again.

“I mean it,” Gwendolyn pressed. “I know the war wasn’t easy, for anyone, and I know it’s probably something you don’t like talking about, or even thinking about too much. So I’m glad you felt that you could tell me… I’m sorry I never considered the ways it must have affected you.”

Mildred looked up in surprise at that. “Whatever do you mean? Gwen, you have been nothing but considerate towards me. I… I know I have a lot of… issues in my past, and I know they don’t always make things easy. And I do try to not let them get to me, but sometimes they just creep up out of nowhere. But you-“ She grasped Gwendolyn’s hands earnestly. “You have always been the most patient person I have ever had the honour of knowing.”

Gwendolyn reclaimed one of her hands to swipe at the rogue tears that had fallen while Mildred spoke. “Now look what you’ve done,” she joked with a watery chuckle.

Mildred gave a tearful laugh of her own and brought her hands up to frame Gwendolyn’s face. She brushed her thumbs across her cheeks to catch the tears. “I love you, Gwendolyn Briggs,” she stated. “More than I’ve ever loved anyone of anything in all my life. You’re the best thing that’s ever happened to me.”

Gwendolyn’s own hands came up to mirror Mildred’s position. “I love you, Mildred Ratched,” she echoed.

They sat like that, unmoving, until Gwendolyn remembered the remnants of the cup in the sink and got up to tidy the mess, hushing Mildred’s insistence of doing it herself and directing her to the sitting room. Although she continued to mutter good-hearted complaints under her breath, Mildred does sit and pick up Gwendolyn’s abandoned book, flicking through it with mild disinterest before placing it on the coffee table.

It didn’t take long for Gwendolyn to return to Mildred’s side. She gave a small chuckle at the sight of Mildred’s slightly puffy eyes, knowing her own probably looked just as bad. “I can’t say I expected my afternoon to take that sort of turn.”

Mildred said nothing, just nestled into Gwendolyn’s side as the latter wrapped an arm around her shoulders.

“Does that happen a lot? I know you’ve had panic attacks before, but do you have many about the war?”

“I’ve had a few,” Mildred admitted. “Not in a long time. It’s usually only if there’s a specific sound or something similar. They were worse when I first got back, not that they were ever particularly bad. A lot of people came back in worse conditions than me – especially the soldiers. They were the ones actually out on the front lines fighting. Most of them came home in varying degrees of shock.”

She shuffled closer to Gwendolyn until she was pressed up against her side. “A lot of people said,” she continued, “that it was like someone completely different came back. War changes a person, not in a good way. The things those men saw… we still don’t fully understand how it affected them.”

“You saw a lot of people like that after the war?” Gwendolyn asked.

“I treated a few men at the time,” Mildred nodded. “There were none at Lucia though.”

Gwendolyn watched the woman – the strong, brave woman – beside her. She was filled once again with an overwhelming sense of pride at how far she’d come, at how well she’d managed, to a certain extent, to overcome some of the trauma of her past.

“I’ll help you through it as much as I can,” she told her. “I know you say others have it worse, but you still ended up with some sort of shock like those soldiers. I think you’re incredibly strong.”

Mildred smile up at her. “My sweet, sweet Gwendolyn,” she said. “You have already helped me so much. You are always right there when I need you. You’re like…” She paused for a moment and looked at Gwendolyn with a sudden intensity that almost startled her. “You are like the sunrise at the end of a dark night. You make all the darkness inside me lighter.”

Gwendolyn laughed through the tears that were once again making their way down her face. “Who knew you had it in you to be so sentimental?”

Mildred just smiled in response and lay her head on Gwendolyn’s lap. “Love has made me soft, clearly.”

Gwendolyn bent her head down to plant a soft kiss on Mildred’s lips. “Well, I think I like soft Mildred.”

**Author's Note:**

> did i say a random soldier was from scranton just because i was watching the office? yes i did. am i also editing and posting this during a lecture? yes i am. perks of pandemic education being online
> 
> if you haven't listened to Zombie, you definitely should because it gets extra brownie points for being about real events
> 
> I hope you all liked this! if anyone wants to yell at me my tumbler is aghramochroi


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